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The Concept of Ontology: Is All One or Flux? Parmenides (515 - 445 B. C. ) was a Pre-Socratic philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city in southern Italy. His city was at the far end of the known world on the other side of Greece where Heraclites and the Ionians lived. He moved to Athens for school, the center of the known world.
He is believed to have been a student of Anaximander and greatly influenced by the teachings of Pythagoras. Though he is not famous for his philosophies, Parmenides is the father of metaphysics. He failed to believe that what is nothing could have been something and what is something came from nothing, which was quite contrary to Pythagoras view. Parmenides felt it was absurd to think that something that exists popped out of existence. He thought that if it exists then it has always existed. This also rejected the sense-appearance belief that many Pre-Socratic philosophers had followed.
Copestone briefly states Parmenides beliefs: Being, the One, is, and that Becoming, change, it comes either out of being or out of not being. If the former, then it already is-in which case it does not come to be; if the latter, then it is nothing, since out of nothing comes nothing. Becoming is, then, also illusion. Being simply is and Being is One, since the plurality is also illusion. Heraclites, another Greek philosopher, held the philosophy It is wise, listening not to me but to logos, to agree that all things are one.
Nothing is known of life other than what can be gleaned from his own. His biography consists of nothing more than inference. Heraclites criticizes important thinkers and writers with whom he disagrees but he never mentions Parmenides. Both great thinkers have contributed to the concept of Ontology in modern philosophy. While Parmenides held that All is one, and that Only that is real which is eternal, unchanging. Heraclites held that all is flux, even though he contended with Parmenides concept.
As it was customary in the Pre-Socratic era, the dispute of being greatly focused on whether change was constant while human perceptions made static separations, so that people can make sense of their environment, or if being exists omni-presently and that perceptions of diversity in matter are false. Plato tried to solve this dilemma with his theory of an objective reality in a realm different from that which is experienced. This paper will try to see both perspectives and will analyze my own rationale in the argument in favor of Parmenides. I presume that we can exist with our own identity and inhere to a greater whole simultaneously; however my rationalism does not extend beyond people. Nonetheless, these philosophers all had valid conclusions and their theories compliment each other. War is king argued Heraclites.
He believed that reality is not composed of a number of things, but is a process of continual creation and destruction. An accurate metaphor for his rationale is a river. Its location remains basically the same. One can walk away from it, and return with the confidence that it will still be there. However, the exact water that flows through it is never the same. One cant tell the difference between the water in the river now and the water in the river earlier and yet this transience of matter does not detract from the identity of the river.
Heraclites would say that all of what we experience is like the river, forever changing in a process of erosion and creation. Heraclites successor, Parmenides, believed that Being must exist virtually in the mind. Because nothing cannot be thought without thinking of it as something, there cannot be nothing, all that can exist is Being. If there is only Being it must be indestructible, uncreated, and eternal. If one agrees that Being is, then there can t be any place where being is not. According Parmenides purely logical view, all perception of vacuous space is an illusion.
Plato tried to solve this dilemma with his theory of the forms. You have before your mind these two orders of things, the visible and the intelligible, he says, which can be compared to opinion and knowledge respectively. In The Republic he uses a line analogy to explain the connection between what we perceive and what really exists. Dividing a line in four unequal parts gives us the four stages of understanding with a state of being on one side of the line corresponding to a state of understanding on the other side of the line. The lowest state of understanding is that of conjecture with its object as images such as reflections, shadows, or any second hand experience.
The next stage is that of belief which has as its object as a specific thing, i. e. a rock. Because this type of understanding is grounded in the uncertainties of sense perception, belief inheres to the visible realm or opinion. To progress from opinion to knowledge, a specific thing must be grasped as theory. This third stage is called understanding by Plato, with its object as concepts.
Plato believes that theories are themselves images of forms, which Plato considers to be the purest principles of reality. In this last stage of understanding the forms correspond with pure reason which comes almost as a divine insight because it has nothing to do with what we experience. Plato's visible realm is similar to Heraclites view of reality while the intelligible realm is similar to Parmenides view of reality. By posing that all objects are poor reflections of their forms and thus never perfect, Plato thought he had resolved the debate of transience and stability.
Plato s student, Aristotle, had one major disagreement with his teacher though. He believed that a distinction should be drawn between objects, or matter, and their forms, but that these qualities could only be separated rationally. Aristotle defines form as the essence of an object, without which it could no longer be identified as that object. An object s matter consists of the qualities that make it unique to that object. He considered matter the principle of individuation.
For example, the form of one drop of water is consistent with the form of any drop of water, which is arguably at least to be liquid. Two different drops of water, however, have different matter, which is why they are clearly separate objects. Aristotle also interprets matter and form as potentiality and actuality. He illustrates with an acorn that the acorn s matter contains the potential of becoming an oak tree, while the oak tree is the actualized matter of the acorn. An object s form, then, is its operating cause. All objects are continually actualized as a final product of change, and potential ized as a process leading to an outcome.
From the above argument, I can contend that the form of me is my soul and my actions and intentions are rooted in it. I believe that we all have souls and that while my ego may be entirely unique from anyone elses; there is something very much the same in my soul as in others. Our souls are like drops of water, easily identifiable when separated, but when united, none is different from the other. Consistent with Parmenides deduction, I do not need to go to someone else to know who they are. I can look within myself because we are the same (at least in some spiritual respects).
I believe that my soul takes on many forms, and so, like Heraclites view, the body of my soul is constantly changing, never the same as before, never the same as it will be. Perhaps it is an operating cause like Aristotle s potentiality and actuality. The truth is, at least virtually, there is a difference between my soul and my body, and so Plato is right too. But that is the extent to which their philosophies make sense to me.
To me it does not matter whether a rock is really a rock, if the true rock exists in some distant plane, or even if it is part of my being. My own spiritual exploration is limited to the nature of my interactions with other people and to the earth. So long as its not about people, Heraclites and Parmenides can argue over inertia all they want, and Plato and Aristotle can wrestle out the definition of form. The nature of being is a philosophical debate which will continue as long as there are people to think about it. I am aware of my own identity, and I am also aware that my connection with everyone on this earth is so intricate and inextricable, that it is like we are all one. Work Cited Page Filter, J.
Parmenides. The internet encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006. Retrieved on February 27, 2006. web Graham, D. Heraclites The internet encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006. Retrieved on February 27, 2006.
web Vlastos, Gregory. "On Heraclitus. " American Journal of Philology 76 (1955): 337 - 68. Repr. in G. Vlastos, Studies in Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, Princeton: Princeton U. Pr. , 1995. Coplestone, Frederick.
A History of Philosophy- Greece and Rome. New York: Image Books, 1962. (pgs 64 - 70)
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